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Pinterest Adds Messaging Capabilities

The wait is over – sending messages on Pinterest is finally here!

As any avid Pinterest user knows, sending pins on Pinterest is a staple to sharing content with friends. Well, now you can send a pin and start a chat conversation all on the desktop site and within the mobile Pinterest app! In honor of this new feature, Pinterest released a video about messaging on their YouTube channel:

To begin a chat, either on the desktop site or on the mobile app, both users must be following each other.

Messaging on Pinterest.com

One way to start a chat conversation on the desktop version of Pinterest is to send a pin to a friend:

I decided that my friend Kelsey really needed to learn how to create confetti eyeliner, so I sent her that pin with a message about the new chat feature:

As you can see, the users I have messages started with all appear on the left side of my screen as face bubbles. If you happen to exit out of those chats, you can find all your messages under your notifications tab:

From the messages notifications tab, it’s possible to send messages to multiple users by clicking the message bubble with a “+” in it on the right corner.

Messages on Mobile

Messages on mobile work similarly to messages on the desktop site. To begin a chat with someone, you can either send them a pin or you can go to your messages tab and click “New Message”:

In a new message, you can also include multiple users for group chatting on the go:

Implications of Messages on Pinterest

While the consumer implications are huge (just think about all the wedding party chats that are about to happen!), the marketing implications have the possibility to be even bigger. With the ability to communicate with fans directly and privately, brands can build an even deeper connection with the users who love them. Fore example, if a brand sees on their Tailwind dashboard that one user drove thousands of dollars in revenue by pinning an item from their site, the brand can reach out directly to that user to thank them. Or, maybe you’re running a Pinterest contest and want to let your most influential followers know about it. Thanks to this new feature, you can contact them directly.

While messaging from a brand can build relationships and loyalty, it also has the potential to turn into spam. However, Pinterest already thought that through. Because the user must be following the brand, and vice versa, it protects users from some of the potentially spammy applications of messaging. While there’s still the chance that an over-zealous marketing intern could go a little chat-happy, a user can simply unfollow the brand to close out the chat.

So this messaging feature loads all old messages and private pins from sign up, I know because I busted my husband having two internet affairs a year ago and when I signed into his account there was all the quotes, love notes and pictures he thought he had deleted, he hadn’t planned on the messaging feature roll out! Thanks for the closure!

Brought to you by the team behind Tailwind. We write about the blossoming visual web, digital marketing, and how businesses can grow by harnessing social data.